How Blockworks Bootstrapped To A +$20M/yr Crypto Empire

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:00)
And the real story of Blockworks, I went home that afternoon, I was like, I'm launching a consulting firm to help companies figure out Ethereum.

**Sam Parr** (0:07)
Hours after learning about Ethereum.
All right, we're live, this is it. This is how we start, man. We get in.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:23)
You just rip into it, huh?

**Sam Parr** (0:24)
We get right into it. Where are you calling from? Your place looks nice. Is this your apartment?

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:27)
Yeah, yeah, this is Blockworks office. Yeah, we got a new office like about a year ago in Manhattan.

**Sam Parr** (0:33)
How many people do you have, like 60?

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:35)
I think we're up to 65, maybe. We had six people start this week.
So I think that might put us at 65

**Sam Parr** (0:43)
What's the pitch for what you are? You're just, I mean, at the high level, a crypto media company. But what did I tell you the other day? I go, you do everything right. You do things the right way.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:54)
Wait, let me just get this straight. So is Shaan not joining this? Because do you know that Shaan told, Shaan DMed me one day. He gave me his cell phone. He said, dude, hit me up. Would love to meet and chat. I've never met the guy.
He gives me his cell phone. I text him. I go, yeah, it's Jason Yanowitz. What's up, man?
I said something about Friend Tech. Guy ghosted me. Never just left me unread.

**Sam Parr** (1:14)
Really?

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:14)
This was gonna be my time on air to call out Shaan, but alas.

**Sam Parr** (1:18)
Well, you called him out. No, Shaan's out. Shaan's getting a nose job. He's out with surgery this week.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:23)
Really?

**Sam Parr** (1:24)
Really? Yeah, but he'll hear this. All right.
Shaan's a ghost or man. Shaan is a ghost or I give him a hard time for that, but he brings the heat so he gets a pass.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:36)
So what are we talking today?

**Sam Parr** (1:38)
I don't know, man. Tell people like you're under the radar, but your business is shockingly big and I think it's gonna be incredibly successful. What's like the pitch for what Blockworks is?

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:47)
Blockworks started six years ago. So my co-founder, Mike and I started it in December of 2017 Basically, the thesis back then, which remains the same, I think we've got a lot wrong over the years, but one thing we got really right was the thesis, which is that crypto as an asset class and as an industry is going to grow exponentially over the coming years. And this was back in 2017, when most of the information about the asset class was basically like siloed on Reddit and Twitter. And our thesis was that as the industry grew exponentially, those investors and professionals who came into the industry, they weren't going to listen to CryptoPanda or CryptoWale about this new asset class. They wanted this professional source of information, kind of like a Bloomberg or Wall Street Journal for crypto.
So yeah, we said, hey, let's go build it. And that was six years ago. So what we've built is basically, for the first five years, we've built a media platform, media company.
We own the largest network of podcasts in the industry. We have a couple of big newsletters. We have, I think, the best team of reporters and journalists in the industry. We own a couple of the large conferences in the industry.
And we built this big media company. And a year ago, we thought the industry was ready for deeper, what I call almost like bottom of the funnel information about crypto, data, analytics, research, protocol, governance.
And that is our subscription platform that we launched called Blockworks Research. So that was a year ago. So that's what, yeah, we're a media and information platform just about crypto, crypto native media and information company.

**Sam Parr** (3:16)
Do you say how big you are? Did you see the research, my guy?
So I have Eugenio, he's my, he had your revenue in EBITDA. Was that all right?

**Jason Yanowitz** (3:24)
Yeah, it's crazy. Oh, he's doing like, that guy's digging.

**Sam Parr** (3:29)
He said in 2023, you're gonna do 25 million in revenue with 8 million in EBITDA. He says 2022, you did 25 and 7 million in EBITDA. Is that right?

**Jason Yanowitz** (3:38)
I'm not gonna say specific numbers, but what I will say is, yeah, last year we had a goal of 20 million in revenue and we pretty decently exceeded that.